We used national surveys to study how older persons’ changing household patterns influence the gender balance of caregiving in two countries with distinct household structures and cultures, Spain and Sweden. In both countries, men and women provide care equally often for their partner in couple-only households. This has become the most common household type among older persons in Spain and prevails altogether in Sweden. This challenges the traditional dominance of young or middle-aged women as primary caregivers in Spain. In Sweden, many caregivers are old themselves. We focus attention to partners as caregivers and the consequences of changing household structures for caregiving, which may be on the way to gender equality in both countries, with implications for families and for the public services.

The notion that social events partly arise as a consequence of inner logic, i.e. that patterns and structures emerge outside of, or even in opposition against, plans and goals is a common element in social science. Inner logic is a summary term for social processes developing autonomously, i.e. without any individual or group intending them. Organizations quite often contain inner-logic processes. If, as this author maintains, fruitful organization theory has to build on rationalistic assumptions, how then do we handle instances of inner logic? A first step may be to break up the traditional link between structuralism and functionalism, maintaining the former and rejecting the latter. Organizations are intentionally dynamic, i.e. depend on order and predictability. To the extent that inner-logic processes appear in organizations, they should be analysed as confrontations between opposing rationalities rather than as spontaneous reactions of a ”system” . Also, frequently recurring organizational forms such as hierarchy are more fruitfully regarded as e.g. transaction-cost outcomes rather than as functional responses to system needs. Rationalism and structuralism are compatible, rationalism and functionalism are not.

This article sets out to introduce the central topics in Max Weber’s inauguration lecture in Freiburg. It is argued that the central, but largely implicit, argument in Weber’s lecture concerns the transformation from a patriarchal to a capitalist mode of employment. Upon this interpretation, Max Weber’s objective is to explain specific migration processes in terms of a configuration of causes, where the social disembedding of rural labour is the key factor.

While it is widely acknowledged that Max Weber was a neo-kantian of some sort, comparatively little has been done to trace down how this affects other parts of his work. This article argues that Weber’s theory of causality can be viewed as an answer to problems evolving from his neo-kantian framework. The aim of the article becomes twofold. First, to give an exposition of Weber’s theory of causality, and second to use this piece of theory as an example of how parts of Weber’s methodology are designed to solve problems posed by the neo-kantian framework. The neo-kantian framework referred to can be summarized in the theses that (I) reality offers an infinite plenitude, and (II) that there is nothing in reality itself that can present us with its interpretation. Taken together, these theses result in the necessity for the subject to make a selection from the infinite reality. These theses are applied to the problem of selecting causes from the infinite causal chain. In order to solve this problem, Weber takes recourse to the adequate cause theory, a variant of jurisprudential theory founded by Johannes von Kries. The last part of the article gives an exposition of some of the basic characteristics and consequences of adequate cause theory.

The article explores the possibilities of “voicing” marginalized subjects by analyzing letters written by female mental patients in the beginning of the twentieth century. Following Michel Foucault, genealogy is here used as a means to explore and reclaim subjugated knowledges, i.e. knowledges that have been dismissed, distorted, disqualified and put aside by more powerful and ultimately victorious knowledge claims, in this case the psychiatric discourse. Historically oriented research on madness has often explored medical and cultural discourses and representations, as these correspond to sources that can be easily found in archives. This also means that mental patients’ own narratives and texts have been more difficult to trace, partly due to the paucity of available documentation. Herein lies a challenge: how can we represent these subjects, whose stories are inevitably always already captured and filtered by authorities, without portraying them either as passive victims or reducing them to effects of power networks? The article thus ponders research ethics, the question of Otherness and the power of representations. The difficulties in representing female patients’ “own”voices are discussed, yet the article points to the necessity of taking voices that are simultaneously in the margins and in the centre of more powerful discourses, seriously as objects of knowledge. The article argues that “the insurrection of subjugated knowledges”, i.e. bringing back such knowledges as represented here by mental patients’ narratives, opens us otherpossibilities of knowledge. Hence, mental patients’ letters are seen as important “fractures” in the official and legitimized knowledge of madness, offering alternative understandings of both committed individuals and the psychiatric discourse itself.

The purpose of the essay is to investigate how the child perspective is taken into consideration in the social services' management of financial assistance. The method used is a qualitative interview study. Six social workers within financial assistance have been interviewed. The study is based on the theory of discretion, and is of relevance to social work since children in families who receive financial assistance constitute a vulnerable group who is at risk of ending socially vulnerable even in adulthood.

The results of the study show that most of the social workers perceive the child perspective as unclear. The study also shows that children tend to be invisible in financial assistance, and that the social workers perceive that they do not have sufficient conditions to work from a child perspective. The study further shows that most of the social workers have a request to work more from a child perspective.

In this article the phenomenon of organization is discussed and its consequences for the understanding of human actions and human choices are examined. Affiliation to organizations are found to be both restrictions on and preconditions for most human action. In this connection families are regarded as organizations as well as enterprises, voluntary associations and states. Human action is primarily action on behalf of organizations where individuals are partly human, partly organization. To understand the meaning of action on behalf of organization it is important to realize that people rarely choose their organizational affiliation. People are selected. This means that actions on behalf of organizations cannot be regarded as expressions of individual choices. Actions on behalf of organizations are generally characterized by a dual involvement.

The three societal spheres state, market and civil society are compared from an organizational perspective. A state is a certain kind of organization with compulsory affiliation. The state is an empirical category that is fairly easy to describe. A market is made up of the interaction of several organizations in exchange. Most actors on a market are people acting on behalf of organizations. Also states are present in markets buying arms for example, or as employers on the labour market. There are several kinds of organization mentioned in connection with civil society such as voluntary associations, social movements and networks. It is concluded that the organizations of civil society are not very persistent. Moreover the notion of civil society is not more incompatible with the state than with other organizational arrangements. As a conclusion it is argued that it is more relevant to understand social processes in terms of types of organization that in terms of states, markets and civil society.

In Finland, a great distance away from Buenos Aires, people crowd dance floors nightly to dance to tango music, while the tango has also captured the hearts of the people on the other side of the world in Japan. The popularity of the tango in both Finland and Japan, however, is not so familiar to the outside world.

In this paper, I will discuss the motives and the paths by which a culture travels, settles and shapes itself into a new form, using the tango as an example. First, the tango’s relationship to society and history in each of these countries are explored using archives and literature. Then such aspects as inner emotion, solitude, illusion, and liminality are analyzed through data collected from surveys, interviews, and forum discussions in the SNS.

Some scholars suggest that the tango reflects the personality, mentality, and identity of the Finnish and Japanese peoples. Though this may be partially true, it is difficult to generalize about the Finnish or Japanese personality. It is argued, rather, that the tango's prosperity in these two countries has significant connections to some shared historical and social factors. I also propose that the 'liminality' of tango dancing plays an important role in both nations that went through difficult struggles to recover from the damage caused by war. “The liminal phase is considered sacred, anomalous, abnormal and dangerous, while the pre- and post-liminal phases are normal and a profane state of being” (Selänniemi 1996). Tango dancing can be considered an escape or a vacation from the hardship of everyday life as well as a fuel which enables the people to keep moving forward.

The tango’s transformation in Finland and Japan, and its homecoming back to Argentina are also examined. The results reveal some of the unusual paths a culture can travel.

Who is the economic criminal? A comparison between countries and types of crime

In white collar crime research two particularly competing definitions (Sutherland versus the Revisionists) have dominated the field during the last two decades. Sutherland’s definition states that the sociodemographic profile is homogeneous (entrepreneur with high education and high or regular income), despite type of white collar crime or context. The definition given by the Revisionists states that white collar criminals’ demographic profile is heterogeneous (everyone can be convicted for white collar crime). As a consequence of this divided definitional approach we have a contradictive outcome of who the white collar criminal is. Our purpose is to investigate the qualification of the two definitions by analyzing heterogeneity/ homogeneity based on crime type and national context. The investigation is based on seven countries from the EES 2004 (European Social Survey). We use four types of crime. The results show a rather homogeneous demographic profile but there is also a certain substantial heterogeneity depending on kinds of crime and context. The results altogether indicate that the Revisionists’ definition is more correct in its description of the white collar criminal than Sutherland’s definition. The demographic profile of the white collar criminal seems to be more complex than a profile confined to just one social category would be and the contextual factor has an impact on the variety of the demographic profile. An important task for future research is to hold the door open for further demographic investigations depending on the type of crime and country that the study is based on.